Delray man sentenced to life in prison for killing of friend
Atmosphere tense when men began to argue over woman.
WEST PALM BEACH — A 31-year-old Delray Beach man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday after a jury convicted him of killing a friend two years ago during an argument over a woman.
The sentence for Dion Graham came immediately after a Palm Beach County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and felony gun possession in the Aug. 22, 2015, shooting death of Jamar Rashad Gammage, 26, outside the Community Market on West Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach.
Gammage was found shot several times outside the market, where a surveillance video caught a confrontation between him and another man. The other man was later identified as Graham.
Assistant State Attorney Takisha Richardson, who prosecuted Graham along with Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis, told jurors at the start of Graham’s trial last week that Graham killed Gammage after a conversation that seemed friendly initially turned into a verbal altercation.
Graham, represented by defense attorney Evelyn Ziegler, said he shot Gammage because he thought Gammage had a gun and was going to shoot his brother.
Richardson told jurors that the surveillance video showed Gammage and Graham talking and even sharing a cigarette together not long before the shooting. But the friendly atmosphere turned tense quickly when the two began arguing over a woman.
On the video, Gammage then appears to offer a hug to Graham’s brother, who was Gammage’s childhood friend, but the brother pushes Gammage’s hand away.
“As soon as Mr. Graham’s brother pushed Jammar Gammage away and dropped his towel, it was like they had a sign.
This defendant came out of the backseat of the car, came around and fired into Jamar Gammage’s unsuspecting body,” Richardson told jurors in her opening statement.
In the end, jurors convicted Graham as charged after nearly three hours of deliberations, and Circuit Judge Laura Johnson immediately sentenced him to a mandatory term of life in prison.